


The Lady by the Lake

by Prochytes



Category: Heroes - Fandom, Merlin (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-22
Updated: 2011-04-22
Packaged: 2017-10-18 12:33:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/188928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prochytes/pseuds/Prochytes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There has been more than one Camelot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lady by the Lake

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for Heroes down to 3x08 “Villains” and for Merlin down to 1x07 “The Gates of Avalon”. Originally written for LJ in 2008.

A chill breeze blew off the lake that was not there. Morgana shivered, and drew her cloak close around her. No drowned gaze lifted to meet hers as she walked. This change, at least, was an agreeable one.

Others were harder to fathom. Earlier walks, earlier dreams, had not disclosed the great black table that stood before her now, twelve tall chairs in circumscription. Morgana, scarred veteran of a hundred banquets, slid smoothly into the diplomat’s drill: her gaze sought out the seat of prominence. It was baffled. The table was a perfect circle.

“Looking for somewhere to sit, my dear?”

Another change. Morgana had known sounds in her dreams before: winds scouring the rushes, the brocaded rustle of the trees. But she had never yet heard a human voice.

The speaker was a woman. She sat, alone, at one of the dozen chairs. The investment of advancing years had made few inroads on the bony distinction of her face. Her eyes held Morgana’s as she spoke again: “I’m afraid I must be sitting in your place.”

Morgana frowned. “You are mistaken, good lady. I have no place here.”

“Of course you do.” The woman sat back, and steepled her fingers. “You’re the girl who dreams the future. The oneiromancer. That is your place. Just as it is mine.”

There was a not unpleasing harshness in the stranger’s tones. It struck sparks off words, like Gaius at his flints. Morgana wondered if she herself would ever learn to use it. The other woman’s gaze flickered across the landscape.

“Pretty. Isolated. Not unlike its maker. Drafty, though. When you’re my age, my dear, you’ll find that the backdrop of your fancy favours interiors instead.”

“You dream as well?” Morgana approached the stranger’s chair. Only now did she fully appreciate the table’s bulk. It was larger even than the one where she strained, night after night, to stave off the silence, while Uther brooded in his cups and peopled the wooden wasteland with yesterdays. “I thought that I…”

“That you were the only one? Perhaps you are. You’ll probably have gathered that time is not altogether welcome here. Which is rather the point.”

Morgana swallowed. “It would be death to me if my secret were noised abroad. Even Arthur…”

“Ah. You have an Arthur. That explains a great deal. What story would be complete without one?”

Morgana’s colour rose. “Do not make game of me, lady. Arthur will be a great king.”

“He’ll have to be. Have you looked at your landscape recently?”

Morgana turned. Sable streaks marred the bark of the surrounding trees. The branches wept night upon the earth.

“The world is sick,” the stranger rubbed her chin, “and it needs to be healed. Where are the king and his company of knights to dry its tears?”

“No.” Morgana backed away from the table. “I want no part in this.”

“You don’t get a choice.” The woman’s eyes looked a little sad. “You will guide him. You will tell him how things must be. And, in the end, you will do what is necessary.”

Morgana met her gaze once more. “‘What is necessary’?”

“You have to understand,” the stranger leaned forward, “Arthur’s story is his sun. It is from it that he takes his strength. But the time will come when it blinds him to everything else.”

Morgana did not blink. “You are wrong.”

“I wish I was. He will tread on the lesser stories like a man walking on twigs, and every brittle snap will break your heart.”

“You cannot know this.”

“Yes, I can. I had an Arthur too, you see. For what he was, I loved him. And for what he became, I ended him.”

“It does not have to be that way.”

“Perhaps. In any event, I don’t think you’ll have long to wait before you find out.” The stranger looked down at the circle of the table. “Change is coming.”

Morgana followed her gaze. And it was that last sight of the table which stayed with her, when she awoke in her bed, sweat cold as armour on her skin. How the great black disc was rimmed with fire, by the sun that lurked impatiently behind it.

 

FINIS


End file.
